“Aren’t you?” said Annie. She took the essay as she spoke, and rolled it up. She then proceeded to gather up some loose pages of foolscap paper, pen and ink, and blotting-paper, and finally she blew out the candles and added them to a little parcel which she proceeded to stow away in a small basket.
“We will go back to the house now,” she said. “We must tread very softly.”
Mabel found herself trembling a great deal and wishing most heartily she was out of this scrape as she followed Annie across the grass. There was a brilliant moon in the sky, and there was a little piece of lawn, bare of any shelter, which they had to cross in order to get to the home. Should any one happen to be looking out of a window, that person could not fail to see the girls as they crossed this moonlit lawn. Mabel thought of it with growing terror as they returned home, and when they found themselves standing at the edge of a belt of dark pine-trees preparatory to rushing across the lawn, she clutched her companion by the arm.
“Oh, I know we shall be seen!” she cried. “Oh, I wish I had not done it!”
“It is too late to go back now, Mabel,” said Annie; “there is nothing for it but forward—right forward. Don’t be a coward;—no one will see us. What teacher is likely to be out of bed at two o’clock in the morning? We shall be in the house in next to no time. We’ll then creep upstairs to our private sitting-room, and all danger will be over. Come, May, come; there’s no holding back now.”
Annie took her companion’s hand, and they rushed tremblingly across the lawn, each of them devoutly hoping that no one was up. A minute or two later they were safely inside the shelter of the house, and then, again, in another minute Annie had softly opened the door of the girls’ sitting-room, where they were to stay until the time for invading Priscilla arrived.
“You may go to sleep if you like,” said Annie. “I will hold your hand; you needn’t be at all alarmed, for I have drawn the bolt of the door, so that if any one should come prying, that person would be prevented entering. But just before you drop asleep I want to arrange my part.”
“I wish I were well out of the whole thing,” said Mabel.
“You can be, of course,” said Annie. “It is but to destroy, this paper that we have just composed together.”